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2017년 6월 4일 일요일

The reason why mobile MMORPG games are popular in korea

The mobile MMORPG games such as NCsoft's Lineage M, Netmarble's Blade Soul Mobile (tentative title), Nexon's AxE and Com2uS's Summoners Wars Mobile (tentative name) are emerging as a game industry trend in the second half of this year.

Lineage 2: Revolution set record sales of $178.5 million within a month, while MU Origin is still in the top 10 in the country after launching two years ago.

Now there are roughly 15 more MMORPGs preparing to launch in South Korea. But why is the MMORPG genre so popular?

The popularity of MMORPG in South Korea is largely due to the influence of Netmarble's Lineage 2 Revolution, which hit the mobile game market in the first half of this year.

One of industry official said, "The popularity of Lineage 2 Revolution has led to the belief that MMORPG genre will work well on mobile," he said. "There is an increasing trend of developers preparing for MMORPGs, dreaming of a second Lineage 2 revolution."

Another reason mobile MMORPG games are popular in Korea is that the mobile network environment is well established.
A fast internet environment is essential for mobile MMORPGs, where large users have to play games at the same time. However, there are not many smartphone penetration rates in regions such as Europe and Japan compared to Korea and WiFi and Long Term Evolution (LTE) are not well equipped.
Korea is well equipped with mobile phone network environment which is essential for mobile version MMORPG.

The industry analyzed that Korean culture, which likes to compete with others is a major factor as well.
An official of a game developer said, "While Western users are interested in setting up strategies and performing them, Korean users tend to prefer systems that compete and show off in a genre such as MMORPG."